Edu4Tech - LEARNING TASKS;ACTIVITY BRIEFS

BYOD at work in a Classroom,with students
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Read the following case and answer the questions that follow.
The school’s e-learning plan should form an integral part of wider school planning to achieve best practices. Schools should consider how introducing student devices as part of a BYOD approach could support achieving the 21st century learning skills and priorities and outcomes. Consider the Bring your own device (BYOD) approach to modern day learning especially the view that it involves allowing you to bring your own devices such as tablets and other suitable personal devices, into classrooms to support learning and improve student learning outcomes. Rather than the school owning the computing devices, as has been the norm to date, the devices belong to the students. BYOD can be used both as an alternative to, or as an additional level of support to computers owned and provided by the school, such as a set of tablets and I pads, that are being shared between classrooms at different times. Many BYOD suitable devices may be more capable and up to date than some school computers. Schools are beginning to see the potential of BYOD to support best practices in Education. Using the BYOD approach for learning Information and Communication Technology in Education allows for a student-centered, active learning approach, where students take more responsibilities for their own learning. Student choice has become a cornerstone of mainstream IT classroom strategy (Boucher, 2015). By allowing students to choose the best devices for their learning needs, schools as learning organizations can improve their learning outcomes and flexibility as well as their learning motivation. To achieve these goals initiatives such as the Bring-your- own-device (BYOD) are important in that they allow students to choose owned learning devices from a small pool of devices to use for learning purposes. However, the role of educators in BYOD classroom sessions is to ensure that effective policies, technologies and best practices are in place to protect the learning processes while maintaining learner motivation as well as realizing the learning outcomes designed (Boettcher, 2015).
It is important to note that the ever-increasing use of mobile devices by young people in all aspects of their lives outside of school challenges us to reflect on whether these devices can be purposefully used for learning in schools (Prensky, 2010). Many young people use these same devices outside school time for ‘informal’ learning using apps, games and educational websites. Rather than devices staying at home, idle, during the school day, there is a significant global shift towards using these same devices as mobile learning devices in schools, using an approach referred to as BYOD (Greer, 2014). The key reason to consider using these devices in schools is to support, enhance and transform the learning experience to improve learning outcomes (Moran, 2015).
Moran (2015) asserts that though schools have much in common in terms of learning objectives, each school is different in terms of its’ own unique mix of requirements, priorities, and challenges. Therefore, when considering new technologies such as introducing pupil or student devices such as tablets, schools should first consider the school learning priorities and outcomes rather than focus on the technologies involved (Moran, 2015). As part of the school self-evaluation process, schools need to identify overall school learning priorities and outcomes. Every school’s e-learning plan should form an integral part of wider school planning to achieve these outcomes. Schools should consider how introducing pupil and or student devices as part of a BYOD approach could support achieving these learning priorities and outcomes